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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
N. C. FRANCIS, H. HURWITZ, JR., P. F. ZWEIFEL
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 2 | Number 3 | May 1957 | Pages 253-287
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE57-A25395
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The calculation of critical parameters, neutron distributions, and adjoint functions for reflected reactors is discussed. A variational technique and a modification of the Wiener-Hopf method are described. The major application is made for the case of reactors moderated by hydrogen, in which case the slowing-down kernel must be introduced either as a numerical function or as a polynomial fit to such a function. For the case of the polynomial fit, explicit formulas for critical size, neutron distributions, and adjoint functions have been found by the Wiener-Hopf method. A comparison with experimental results for water-moderated reactors shows discrepancies consistent with the discrepancy known to exist between the measured and calculated neutron age in water.